


A Part of Whitestone

by nomoreuturns



Series: Tales from Whitestone [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 01:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12783903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomoreuturns/pseuds/nomoreuturns
Summary: Elza is seven, Freddie has just turned three. The de Rolos will always be a part of Whitestone.





	A Part of Whitestone

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this thread](https://twitter.com/TukRoll/status/919707716565704704) on Twitter, and [this tweet](https://twitter.com/TukRoll/status/919710473234219008) in particular.
> 
> A huge thank you to [mugwort_and_myrrh](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mugwort_and_myrrh/pseuds/mugwort_and_myrrh) for the beta read, especially since she doesn't even go here.

Cassandra frowned at the ledger before her, silently despairing at her brother’s attempts at minutes-taking. She had been back in Whitestone for just over a week now, after an endless, too-short vacation in Westruun. Two whole weeks of nothing to do with Whitestone, of visiting with Shaun and Pike Trickfoot, and the occasional night of drinking and philosophizing with Keyleth and an older gentleman named Ker.

It always surprised her how enjoyable time away could be, at least once she got used to being idle. Sometimes she felt as if she would fall apart without something to do, but the time to relax was something she cherished, along with the chance to just not think about her home and her responsibilities for a while, as much as she loved them.

If the state of these ledgers was something she’d have to deal with again, however, Percival would have to force her out of Whitestone at gunpoint. For such an intelligent, eloquent man, he was terrible at taking minutes for the Chamber of Whitestone. She sighed, and continued her careful translation of his crabbed, fragmented notes.

A short while later, she became aware of the sound of faint, rapid footfalls approaching her office. She paused, listening intently, and allowed herself to relax as she placed the louder, faster steps, the shuffling, slower steps, and the faint-but-growing giggles of her niece and nephew.

The door, only partly closed, opened with a _whoosh_ of displaced air — it didn’t slam against the wall, due more to the door-stop Percival had installed than any care on the part of the children — and Cassandra raised her pen from the paper. The children clattered into the room, scarcely slowing, and slid to a halt beside her desk, someone bumping the desk and someone jostling her elbow.

“Aunty Cass, Aunty Cass,” Elaina chanted; Fredrick echoed her, lisping a little on the Ss. “Look at us!”

Working to keep her smile from her lips, Cassandra lowered her pen to the paper once more, finishing the end of her sentence before looking up.

“What—” _—is it?_ she meant to say, but the question was replaced by an undignified choking hiccup as she got a decent look at the pair.

Elaina and Fredrick had inherited the dark hair that both of their parents had been born with; Elaina’s wavy tresses were almost as dark as a raven’s wing, while Freddie’s soft curls had more of a chestnut hue. Usually, at any rate: now the colors were muted, covered by a liberal coating of dusty white powder. Cassandra was vividly reminded of the time Trinket had run afoul of a sack of flour at _The Slayer’s Cake_.

“Look, Aunty Cass! We’re part of Whitestone, too!” Elaina said, sounding positively gleeful. Beside her, Fredrick nodded furiously, sending a small cloud of white dust billowing out around his head. He sneezed.

“‘Scuse me,” he murmured, and made to rub his nose on his sleeve. Cassandra immediately reached into her skirt pocket for a handkerchief and held it out to him.

“Blow,” she ordered. Fredrick looked at her for a moment, faintly mutinous, then took the handkerchief and scrubbed at his face; Cassandra stifled a sigh, and used the time to compose herself. “My dears, what happened?” she asked, once Fredrick had emerged from the linen and she thought she could trust her voice to come out steady.

“We got some of the whitestone dust, Aunty Cass! If we put it in all the time, our hair will go as white as yours and Papa’s!” Elaina told her.

“And where did you get the dust from, my loves?” she asked. Elaina paused, then shrugged and made an overly casual gesture with her hands.

“From around,” she said vaguely. Cassandra arched an eyebrow at her, then looked at Fredrick, who lasted all of three seconds — Cassandra even counted, _One, two, three..._ — before sheepishly pointing down.

“From the ziggyzat,” he said.

 _“Freddie!”_ Elaina hissed, giving her brother a frustrated look. Fredrick stuck his tongue out at her, unrepentant, and she pulled a horrid face in response.

Cassandra cleared her throat, and the children turned back to her. Cassandra gave Elaina a stern look, and for a moment Elaina looked appropriately chastised. Just a moment, and then the effect was ruined when she gave Cassandra a cheeky smile and an incredibly unsubtle wink. Cassandra gave in and sighed.

“What were you doing near the ziggurat? You know it isn’t entirely safe down there.”

“We weren’t alone!” Elaina said. “Uncle Scanlan was down there, helping Papa.”

“And did they know _you_ were down there?” Cassandra asked. “Or did you slip away from your tutor again?” Elaina’s face immediately took on an expression of mutinous misery.

“He’s _old_ and _stuffy_ and doesn’t let us _play_ , Aunty Cass, it’s _awful_.”

Beside Elaina, Fredrick was nodding his agreement. Cassandra fought the urge to pinch at the bridge of her nose.

“Master Gadsworth isn’t _that_ old,” she said. “And he just wants you to know about the different parts of our world.”

“We already — ” Elaina began, retreading a familiar argument, and Cassandra held up a hand.

“A discussion for another time, I think,” she said, and Elaina subsided with a huff. “You said you put the dust in your hair to be like your father and me?”

“Yeah! Yes,” Elaina said. “We want to be a part of Whitestone, too!”

“You’re already part of Whitestone, my loves,” Cassandra said. “You are de Rolos. You live here.”

“We don’t...” Elaina trailed off, looking conflicted, then started again, determined. “We’re not the same as the others, and that’s _all right_ , but we want to make sure we’re part of Whitestone, like you and Papa, and you got your white hair from the stone, so we did it, too.”

She tucked a tendril of dusty hair behind her ear, a habit she’d picked up while visiting Zephrah earlier in the year. Cassandra looked at her and at Fredrick, with their dark hair and their ears that tapered gently into points, and tried desperately to think of what to say.

Whitestone was a human city: founded by humans, ruled for most of its history by humans, and populated almost exclusively by humans. A few halfling and dwarven families lived in the city, and members of different races visited: elves from Syngorn had been making diplomatic trips once or twice a year, thanks to Vex’ahlia’s status as ambassador and the teleportation circle installed at her estate. Friends and acquaintances of Cassandra and her family often made their way to the city to visit for a few days or weeks or months. Among these visitors were gnomes and goliaths, more halflings and more dwarves, tieflings and half-orcs.

But half-elves were rare. The Syngornian elves were not such good friends with Whitestone yet for romantic relationships to result, or for children to follow. Cassandra herself had only met three half-elves before leaving Whitestone for the first time; since then, she had added only a handful more to her acquaintance.

Almost all of Elaina and Fredrick’s peers were human. Had they...had someone...

“Elaina...did someone say something to you? About having elvish blood?” Cassandra asked, keeping her voice light despite the bitter cold welling up inside her. She would find whoever had made them feel this way, she would make them regret it, she would —

“No, Aunty Cass,” Elaina said, and Cassandra forced herself to focus. Elaina looked pleased with herself, not hurt or worried. It was the same look Percival had when he solved a problem with the clock tower. “But we know we look so much like Mamma, because...” She trailed off and touched her ears, her hair; beside her, Fredrick followed suit, a beat behind. “We don’t want to change our ears, but we thought we could change our hair to be more like Papa’s, and yours.”

“An’ we did!” Freddie said excitedly, raising his arms in victory.

“We did!” Elaina said, and high-fived one of his upraised hands. Cassandra smiled, but some of her disquiet must have shown on her face, because Elaina’s smile faded slightly. “Should we not have?” she asked, her hands creeping up to brush her hair behind her ears again.

Cassandra considered for a moment, then stood and reached out to the two of them. “Come on, we’re going for a walk.”

Fredrick cheered and grabbed a hold of her right hand, bouncing on his toes; Elaina hesitated, then carefully took her left hand. “Where are we going?” she asked as Cassandra began to lead them down the halls.

“I’m going to show you a place my mother used to take me,” she replied, leading them along the corridor, inclining her head to Trish as the guard fell into step behind them. Cassandra thought the children would barely notice Trish’s presence, accustomed as they were to the guards following them, but Elaina glanced back once as they started off, and every so often Fredrick would smile and wave over his shoulder.

Eventually, they reached the southern tower, and then the small balcony perched halfway up. Cassandra retrieved her hand from Elaina and pulled open the door, then led them out into the brisk afternoon air. Below them lay Whitestone, in all its renewed glory: the familiar contained sprawl of buildings and homes, the expanded Temple of the Dawn standing proud at the entrance to the Greyfields, and the smaller Altar of the Raven nestled among the headstones, Dawnfather Square with the Sun Tree in the center and the clock tower on the western side, and the Parchwood surrounding it all.

Elaina darted forward to the guardrail, and Fredrick dropped Cassandra’s hand to follow. Cassandra knew well the solid stone and wrought iron that enclosed the balcony, sheltering it from the wind and making it secure, but she still felt her heart leap into her throat for a moment, seeing them so close to the open air. _Now I know how Mother felt when I did that._

“Papa never took us here,” Fredrick said, peering through the filigree panel and taking in the city below; Elaina, being taller, had her arms folded on the top of the rail and was craning her neck for an unobstructed view.

“Your father loves Whitestone, but he thinks best when he’s tinkering in his workshop,” Cassandra replied, sitting down on one of the stone benches flanking the door. “Your grandmother, my mother, thought best in the open air. As do I.”

“And Mamma!” he said, glancing back at her, and she smiled.

“Yes, and your mother, too.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, relishing the bite of cold in her lungs. In the distance, a raven cawed.

“It’s so beautiful,” Elaina said softly.

“It is,” Cassandra agreed. She opened her eyes and looked at them, with their pointed ears and fine-but-practical clothes and their dust-whitened hair.

She had never known anything as precious as these children.

“I love you both very much.”

The words were out before she even realized she’d spoken, and for a moment she wished she could snatch them out of the air before they reached the children’s ears. But Elaina and Fredrick were already turning away from the view, looking at her quizzically.

“We love you too, Aunty Cass,” Elaina said slowly, and Fredrick echoed her.

“Love you, too, Aunty Cass.”

“Thank you,” Cassandra said. She waved them over, and they came and sat beside her on the bench, cuddling into her on either side. She wrapped her arms around them and pressed a kiss to each of their heads, feeling the faint grittiness of the whitestone powder against her lips.

“Your father and I were both born here, like you,” she said after a moment. “Growing up, we both had dark hair, like our brothers and sisters, like our parents.”

“But...Papa’s got white hair, though,” Freddie said, and Elaina nodded and reached up, tracing the streaks of white along Cassandra’s hairline.

“And so do you, Aunty Cass...some, at least.”

“We do now,” Cassandra said. “But the hair didn’t come from the whitestone.”

“What, then?” Elaina asked, her eyes lighting up with renewed curiosity. Cassandra felt her lips quirk into a smile, and with some effort she managed to keep the bitterness from it.

“That is a boring story, not suited for such a beautiful day. What matters is this, my loves: Whitestone is not in our family’s hair. It is in our bones.”

“Inna bones?” Fredrick asked, looking down at his hands. Cassandra nodded, and tapped him on the forehead, making him cross his eyes and giggle.

“In our bones. Whitestone’s strength is our strength, and it lives in our bones, like the whitestone lives in the mountains around us.”

“I thought only goliaths and dwarves were made of rock?” Elaina said. “Not humans or elves?”

“Elves are trees,” Fredrick said with a solemn nod.

“Ye-es,” Cassandra said, making a mental note to monitor the next occurrence of Uncle Grog’s Story Time. “But the de Rolo family, and all those descended from the first settlers of Whitestone...some say we were led here, by the Dawnfather. Whatever the case, we hewed this city from the stone, and so it’s in our bones, now. Do you understand?”

Elaina and Fredrick stared at her for a long moment, then looked at each other for another moment, and then nodded. She smiled at them.

“Excellent. Now, why don’t we go find your parents? I dare say your mother would love to see your hair.”


End file.
